FAQ

Why should I host a course on OpenWetWare?

There are several motivations for hosting a course on OpenWetWare ...

Enhance student participation in the course. Students have the ability to edit any page on OpenWetWare. So by placing course materials here, you are giving them the ability to revise (and improve) course content.

Facilitate collaborative course development. Many courses are developed jointly among multiple faculty and teaching assistants. Placing the materials on OpenWetWare makes it easy to work together on developing course materials (as compared to emailing word documents back and forth).

Why shouldn't I host a course on OpenWetWare?

A common concern among many OpenWetWare users is that someone may accidentally or intentionally modify a page. However, all changes and updates are tracked and can be easily reverted. Nevertheless, course instructors do need to monitor their course site to ensure that errors are not introduced and propagated around the class.

Am I surrendering copyright to my course materials?

No, you retain copyright to all materials you upload or write on OpenWetWare. You can later republish and relicense them in any way you like. However, you can never retract the Creative Commons Atrribution ShareAlike and GFDL licenses for the versions you placed here.

How do I start?

Get an account

You'll need a user account on OWW to edit pages. Register for an account here.

Learn the basics of wiki editing

Once you're comfortable with the basics, continue with these directions.

Set up your course template

Once you've registered for an OWW account, start by making your course banner. Your course banner will be used on every course page to help identify it as belonging to your course and to enable students to navigate through the course wiki pages.